


Last Things

by Berguba



Category: Cultist Simulator (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, Necromancy in the divination sense, Necrophilia, Suicide, necrophagia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-20 07:55:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20224435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Berguba/pseuds/Berguba
Summary: Zachary chose his ending. I did not ask him to. I never had to. He did not tell me why.He never had to.





	Last Things

When first we met, he wasn't cognizant of what I was. Nor, I remember, was I. I spoke words new and familiar, ancient and ripening, and he, too, remembered them. _Déjà vu, _perhaps, or, as he then assumed, folie à deux. But, indeed, why only one? Why only two? As I left my show - my last sponsored performance, and lasts are always important - with my throat raw and cold, tasting of blood and feathers, I felt his gaze like knives on me. Before I even turned, I felt his hand clamp down on my shoulder, and I feared he would never let go, that this was the end. I am not ashamed to admit that, in that moment, I grew aroused, though I hid it, then.

"Shh," he hushed me, even as I drew a labored breath, "Don't make _another_ scene. I'm with the Bureau," he didn't have to say _which, _of course, given the circumstances, "and it occurs to me that we may have something to discuss. My card, if you ever want to talk. If you have something you feel should be brought to... _my attention_." Even then, he was possessive. I licked my lips, but said nothing as he went off into the night, where I thought, for a moment, that I saw snow falling from the empty sky. He turned up his collar, and I knew he had seen it, too.

On the occasion of our second meeting, he saw me, going into the Litchfield cemetery, under cover of night, and fog. He saw, too, the shovel, the lamp, and the hunger in my eyes, the flicker of my tongue and working of my jaw as I anticipated. I saw him, too, and resolved that he should not see me leaving. I bedded that night beside my prize, in a hollow beneath a tree, and I thought of him. Zachary Wakefield, his card said. I said nothing, but ground against the cold flesh of my meal until I was, for a time, satisfied. They had been murdered, and there wasn’t enough left of them to penetrate in a way that appealed to me, but the texture of cold skin, dead flesh, stiff muscle and broken bones was enough. When I finished that particular meal, the face, even the name, of the killer lingered in my mind.

"Wakefield, speaking," he answered the phone with a clinical coldness, a brevity that implied that he, Wakefield, would rather not be speaking. I spoke two names, and two dates, and broke the connection. The trial was not televised, but it was in the news. Perhaps he was grateful. But I think not. I learned, much later, that the convicted had demanded the death penalty, and been disappointed. He had, however, gone on a hunger strike in protest, and his bones were all but bereft of flesh when I tasted them.

Eventually, and briefly, I grew careless, and, with evidence mounting, the media warbling about the string of grave robberies and other trespasses, less specific, but very definite, we spoke again. I told him everything. I said a single word. He understood. He resigned. I let him go his own way, for a while, but, eventually, when it was _his_ face I recognized in the negative space of one of my masterpieces, drawn from a bright and frozen dream, I spoke to him again. It was the last time. Last things have power, as we both then knew. I gave him the portrait, and he nodded. I gave him, too, a mirror. I would not need it. Each morning, the mirror and painting side by side, he styled himself, and looked more wolfish still.

It, like all things, was not meant to last. My so-called believers had all abandoned me, or else gone mad, or been fed to one hunger or another thirst. Only Zachary and I remained. And I, weak with hunger, my teeth cutting my gums, my belly growling, my last work nearly finished, but without the strength to conclude it, I felt his grip on my shoulder. His hand still clings there, though it be skeletal. He sat across our table from me, each of us with an ivory plate - mine empty, his steaming with chunks of dry ice. He ate. He ate until he ceased. And then I ate.

"There is something inside of him," I wrote in my journal that night, "that remembers something that he never knew. Remembers when that something hadn't been forgotten, when the crime was new and fresh and bright. He would have wanted me to know. It is better this way. It is better."

Death is down. And perhaps, so, too, is Zachary. But I think not. This is the last I shall write.


End file.
